You are welcome here.

wsg 59 Dana Lewis and Proper Table

Hey! I had the comment button turned off. Not on purpose, totally by accident. I also left my keys in the door and someone stuck them through my mail slot. So, there’s that. My reason for telling you this: please try to comment again. Come on, all the cool grown ups are doing it.

Setting a table is a very conscious act. No one is going to suffer if you don’t set a table but the act of setting a table says something. You are welcome here.

Typically, kids are the ones to set the dinner table. I wasn’t made to do it (at least I don’t remember doing so as an obligation). But I did make my kids put out the napkins and silverware each night for years. Now, when they come home they reach in the drawer and pull out the cloth napkins I have been using for years (Pierre Deux, or Pottery Barn), some silverware and water glasses, maybe even a candle. I used to use place matts that were either instructional for the kids, like a map, or the hard cardboard Britishy things that warp, eventually. At some point I stopped using the placemats on a regular basis. Soon, however, I will have some gleaming new placemats and napkins from Proper Table, more on that later (SEE discount code below!)!

With all of the things that have become obsolete and have lost importance from when we grew up (land lines, a telephone closet, rotary dial, dialing the time and weather, busy signals, ironing everyday shirts, stick shifts, penny loafers with dimes to make a call, typewriters, newspapers, magazines, letters), setting a table has not and cannot be done on an app!

The simple act of setting a table expresses intentionality. You are welcome to come sit and share a meal with us. We have been expecting you. As a family member it should feel like a safe space. Talk, or don’t talk, but you’ll probably have something to say. A no-electronics and put your napkin on your lap space. Without rules there is chaos. With chaos there is uncertainty and with uncertainty there is anxiety and lord knows we have enough of that. With all of the issues that may create family divisions, setting a table is pretty much done one way. We can all agree on that. But, we can also have fun with the process!

Dana Lewis revels in the setting of a table. If you check out her Instagram @propertableco there is a visual consistency that says, someone here knows what they are doing. Her Instagram inspires me to do more. Tables are her canvas and tablewares are her medium with which she expresses her creativity and excellent, timeless taste.

Two years ago, Dana began planning a company that creates elegant tableware and launched it a year ago. I wanted to talk to her for two different reasons: one, to hear about her entrepreneurial journey in starting a company that makes things that need to be sold. Two, the story behind the product. Her passion for setting the table. So, Here we go!

WSG Readers! Order through here and get 15% an order at Proper Table! Use this code PROPER15 when you check out at PROPER TABLE!

---

Maven of the week! Dana Lewis!

I am going to ask a lot of questions because I know nothing about how one gets an idea about a product and then has it made and then gets it out to the public. 

Part l: The business

I love that you started planing a business at 48 and launched it a year ago. In your words, how did Proper Table evolve? Who did you use as a sounding board?

After asking Dana about how she began Proper Table it occurred to me that it probably would not have happened without COVID. I do believe that she’d have started another company at some point, she has a life long entrepreneurial spirit but, perhaps not this company. During COVID two things happened that weren’t in regular times: Dana and her family made mealtime an important focus of the day and took turns setting the table and people, other entrepreneurs had a lot of time to talk to her about her ideas. A great takeaway, people really wanted to help you, you just need to be willing to ask.

Why did you decide to start your tableware business?

I love this story and can completely relate to it. Dana tells me that during one of the many COVID family dinners it was the kids (she has three) turn to set the table and make dinner. They were excited. They made Gigi Hadid’s pasta a la vodka sauce and set a glamorous table. Dana said she walked into the dining room, full of happy anticipation and then the proverbial record scratched. She saw her grandmother’s white linen and lace table cloth set with matching napkins and a big bowl of red pasta sauce. She tells me she knee jerk responded with “no way. Table’s got to be reset” killing the happy moment. How many of us have done that? Over the next few days she thought a lot about the incident. After getting past the “why did I react that way” she got to thinking. She loves to set the table (more on that later) with placemats and cloth napkins. She would love to do it with tableware that can take a red pasta sauce and not get ruined, but look special. Form follows function and she started ordering what she could find online. She started thinking about what the placemats were made of, linen? cardboard? Paper? Acrylic? She thought about what she would like to see on her table. She began to formulate her plan.

Where did your entrepreneurial spirit come from?

Proper Table is not Dana’s first business. While at college she began DP Sweets, a kind of bakery on demand in pre internet days. Parents could order a cake and have it delivered on campus for their kid’s birthday or other special event. She said she and her Dad covered all the parents’ cars with her bright pink flyers during parent’s weekend and the orders started rolling in! She was in a sorority at the time and had a lot of tasters and helpers.

What was the first thing you did when you figured out you wanted to start a business? (Make a business plan? Did you make a marketing plan? Budget? Did you hire anyone to help you get your idea off of the ground? I am sure there are readers who aren’t sure what the first steps are to creating a business (ok, it’s me)).

Dana says she did not have a business plan and never has made one but worries she should have one. This made me chuckle. Dana, she admits, is a bit of a perfectionist. Not having a business plan was a nod towards giving herself permission to not be perfect. She said to herself, I’ll start and fix it later when I need to. She says having three kids has forced her to loosen her grip on process and outcome. With one kid, she says, you might be able to pull off something like perfection, with two a little less and with three forget it. How right she is. So, rather than a business plan, she wasn’t looking for investors, she did research online. She looked at materials and tested them at home. She did spreadsheets for profit margins. She created an LLC. She filled out a lot of paperwork: federal tax ID, State Tax ID. She said the process took up a lot of time which was fine because it was covid and there was nothing else going on. She wanted to do everything as inexpensively as possible which meant she was doing all the work. When she got confused and frustrated she would remind herself that every small business owner has to jump through these hoops. If they can do it, she can do it. Good point!

What is the biggest challenge for you as an entrepreneur?

She wishes she had a business partner. She made a series of excellent points that I can completely relate to: Being alone all the time is hard, making every decision is hard, it would be nice to have a sounding board, a collaborator, nothing happens in her business if she is not orchestrating it. Finding a partner is difficult. She is about to expand but deciding what kind of employee she needs is complicated.

What podcasts do you listen to inspire or learn from?

How I Built This, but she’s not big on podcasts.

What do you do for encouragement or to be motivated?

Bare with me here. We take a circuitous route to her source of encouragement. Dana says she saw in one of her kids a trait she herself has always struggled with: a Fixed Mindset (see below for further explanation). In Dana’s summation “A Fixed Mindset is when you believe that your intelligence and abilities are pretty much what you were born with - and there’s not much you can do to change them. If you believe you’re pretty much as good as you’re going to get, failure is very scary because you don’t believe there is any upside.” Without failure we cannot evolve and discover new paths for ourselves.

She was reading the book by Stanford University’s Carol Dweck called Mindset, in part discussed above. The thrust of Growth Mindset (as opposed to Fixed Mindset) is, according to Dana, “the belief that we are capable of learning and growing and that failure is a springboard for growth and a learning opportunity. Mistakes are how we learn and get better—not a commentary on your worth as a person”. Over COVID she and her family took the Yale Happiness course. She made her kids read Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Learn, which they were not too happy about. The family would discuss each reading at dinner and the reward was their favorite desert. She wanted her kids to learn not to be a harsh critic of themselves nor to be afraid of risk. That sometimes a thing that doesn’t work out leads to another, better path.

She sees her business that way. If Proper Table doesn’t work out, she has learned so much she knows it will lead to the next thing, whatever that is. She wants to lead by example for her kids. Growth mindset. Learning to fail, not failing to learn. Take risk. Our kids are surrounded by the drum beat of “you are not enough” and she is trying to show there are other ways to think.

Tell us about how you settled on the style, look and feel of the placemats and napkins that you have. Was there an original product that inspired you from your childhood? 

Dana wanted products that could be used everyday. Not only for a casual meal but for any meal. No Santa Clause napkins or Valentine’s day placemats. She wanted classic, French linen with a red check, or navy ticking stipe. Classic and simple, enduring style. Dana chose to do her placemats in sturdy and wipeable acrylic with fabric sandwiched in between. She produces both round and rectangular placemats and says they sell equally well. Her favorite is the rectangle because she likes there to be room to put a glass and a plate on the placemat, though she does sell coasters, as well! The napkins are made in the same classic fabrics as the placemats for a clean and lovely table top uniform. As you can see from the photos included in this piece, the placemats and napkins can be dressed up and layered on table cloths and dressed down for kid dinner at the island.

Meanwhile, I am assuming once you figured out what you were going to sell and then how to make it, you needed to figure out how to sell it. Please tell us about the marketing and selling process. Are you a one-woman show? 

Pretty early on Dana found a public relations company that has been an enormous help. She found them on Instagram! They have been connecting her to influencers and placing her wares with magazines. Come Spring 2023 Proper Table will be with West Elm in their “Makers” section and in Paperless Post’s online boutique as well as Over The Moon! Take a look online for Proper Table and you will be impressed by the elegance and consistency of what you see. Dana says in addition to the PR firm, she goes to a trade show or two and they have been important for connections and to learn from her competitors. In general, Proper Table sells direct to consumer, but it is carried at several boutiques and always evolving.

Part ll Passion for table setting

Dana, tell us about your affinity for presenting a lovely table at mealtime. Did you have to set the table as a kid? Did you always set a table for your own family? 

I love this story. As a kid it was Dana’s job to empty the dishwasher and her sister’s to set the table. That’s the way it was. They did not alternate jobs. Needless to say, Dana says she grew up “obsessed” with setting the table. Well, go figure! She said growing up she adored Martha Stewart (me, too), and rearranging the furniture in her parent’s home. Setting the table is important to her. During COVID her family took turns setting the table. She has some general rules as far as life at the table goes. A big rule is no condiment containers, no plastic bottles. As she said, “anything that comes in a bottle needs to be “decanted” into a bowl or pitcher. She also likes some sort of greenery at the center of the table and candles. She says, even if the meal was chicken nuggets on a plate she had placemats and linen napkins. Importantly, she says setting the table creates a defined moment. If all else is out of control, at least the table is predictable and under control.

The “stock” questions for everyone I interview:

What did you want to be when you grew up?

A Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleader, to work at Carvel (the ice cream cake maker), and do something entrepreneurial like owning a shop.

What are you excited about now?

 Collaborations! She is going to do some pop up shops where she will do what she loves, meeting her customers. She is also in the middle of rebranding Proper Table.

What books are on your bedside table?

She loves the Jane Harper books like Exiles. Other books on her table include Trust, and My Last Innocent Year.

What do you do to relax?

She reads, takes long walks and has cocktails with friends.

What category/subject  would you add to the Guide?

She would like a section that talks about the importance of rituals. Make it simple, keep it easy, but special. Our rituals help define the moment and the moment is what connects us and connecting is the way to happiness.

---

A Recipe You Won’t Hate!

Everyone's Favorite Caesar Salad (cow dairy free)

One of our favorite things to do is host big groups of our kids' friends--there's nothing more joyful than a house bursting with the energy, laughter, and vibrancy of hungry teenagers! Our high school has a beloved tradition of Friday night team dinners, and this salad is the girls rowing team's favorite. No matter how much salad we make, the bowl is always quickly emptied. Homemade croutons are a MUST.

Serves 6-8

Dressing

• ½ cup pecorino Romano cheese, grated

• ½ cup Hellmans mayonnaise (not the organic version)

• ½ - 1 garlic clove, diced, crushed, or grated

• 1 anchovy, diced

• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

• ground pepper

• dash of Tabasco sauce

• 1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

• 3 Tbsp. water (add more or less depending on your preferred consistency)

Add all ingredients to a 2-cup pyrex or similar vessel and combine with immersion blender.

Croutons

• Loaf of Italian bread or similar

• Olive oil

• Salt and pepper

Cube a loaf of Italian bread, toss with a generous pour of olive oil. Spread bread on a baking pan, sprinkle lightly with kosher salt and pepper. Bake at 375 degrees until golden, 8-10 minutes. Make extra--they are quickly gobbled up while cooling on the stove.

Salad

• Romaine lettuce, chopped

• Homemade Croutons

Toss washed and chopped Romaine with dressing. Generously add croutons! Serve with extra cheese, if desired.

Phenom!!

Dana and I are going to do a podcast so stay tuned!

that’s all for this week!

xo

k